In October 2017, the heads of six interpreting delivery platforms (IDPs) met on the sidelines of the 6th InterpretAmerica Summit in Washington, D.C. They were determined to address a bottleneck in the development of the IDP market that had been identified over a year earlier in a CSA Research report on the subject – that is, applications designed

Neural machine translation has recently garnered the lion's share of attention for artificial intelligence (AI) in the language industry. Highly visible applications such as Google Translate and Microsoft Translator rank up there with self-driving cars in the public imagination. In addition, requirements for multilingual content are growing far more

Despite the reluctance of some executives to hire salespeople, growth for language service providers is closely tied to developing a formalized sales function.
Using responses from CSA Research’s 2017 Global Market Study, we tracked the percentage of LSPs that reported a revenue increase over the previous year and compared it to the level

Multilingual knowledge bases (MLKBs) are an essential component for many organizations in today’s global economy. Many companies still try to adapt their legacy word-based repository into searchable documents online. However, this is not enough to meet the agile-ized, mobile-ized, and personalized requirements of their customers and prospects

Business is looking good in the language sector. CSA Research’s business confidence survey of the CEOs of the largest language service providers found 2017 to be a growth year, and respondents optimistically entered 2018. Sector revenue and language output continue to rise as the content and code that power economies are becoming more global.

Winter sports enthusiasts – and the companies that sponsor them – are focused on the Olympics in, South Korea this month. This global sports event may prompt your organization to review jumping into South Korea for the first time. Or it may offer the chance to review your current investment level to prepare for the future. In either case

Five or 10 years ago, most enterprises produced support documents, manuals, marketing, websites, videos, and other types of materials they then pushed out to the world for consumption by their audience. Although they might hear back from people who called in to support lines, this content usually disappeared into the ether where it either served its

In any given year, web and mobile sites add and drop language support in response to a wide variety of macro-economic and business factors. In a detailed analysis of 2,648 global brand websites, CSA Research found that 26% added one or more languages in 2017. However, not all enterprises increased multilingual support. In fact, one in 10 removed at

In "The Language Services Market: 2017," CSA Research estimated that the language services and technology sector would turn over US$43 billion for the year, growing 6.97% over 2016. We also forecast that the market would continue its growth over the next four years, driven by increasing demands for multilingual information in written and spoken form

Interpreters have historically used a variety to tools to prepare themselves for interpreting assignments. However, their technology choices have been limited to an interpreter console, interpreting delivery platform, or glossary. That’s about to change with the emergence of full-fledged computer-aided interpreting (CAI).
What is CAI?
CAI

The Japanese market is an attractive prospect for foreign companies that can succeed in it. In 2017, Japan accounted for 7.7% of the world's online economic potential, despite having just 3.2% of the global Internet-connected population ("Digital Opportunity: Top 100 Online Languages for 2017"). It's per-capita GDP is one of the world's highest, which

How do you decide whether potential employees need to understand, speak, read, and write the same language that’s used at company headquarters? Which criteria should human resources (HR) and hiring managers apply when evaluating potential hires who will work out of regional offices? Based on recent consulting and advisory sessions with global

In the evolving world of digital marketing, there is a shift happening that can benefit the careers of localization professionals with content backgrounds—and content experts with localization experience. The shift comes about as companies gather the strands of digital marketing, such as e-mail, landing pages, SEO, apps, blogging, click advertising

Automation has come a long way, leading now to its most advanced and buzzworthy state, artificial intelligence. AI refers to technologies that learn from training data and experience to perform tasks that would otherwise require human intelligence. When applied to a PM’s job, AI enables “lights-out” project management, in which software

From their earliest stages, LSPs face the question of whether to build or buy the software on which they run their business. Triggers can include the need for differentiation, the need to tailor work processes for different customers and job types, or the requirement to stitch together disparate systems for monitoring and reporting. The question of

A strong website that delivers a clear and compelling message, tailored to your specific audience can help drive sales. It must succeed in both its content and its technical structure. In June 2017, CSA Research examined 305 websites from language service providers in depth. This number included all 191 of the top and regionally ranked providers from

The recent CSA Research survey on gender and family in the language services industry reveals a mixed picture. Translation, localization, and related services are a female-dominated field, with about two-thirds of the workers being women. At the same time, the upper echelons of many companies reverse this polarity, with men taking a disproportionate

New technology developments are stirring up the language industry, but the buzz mostly centers around neural machine translation (NMT) and artificial intelligence (AI). Something else is afoot that most observers are not discussing: the shift from monolithic to distributed systems. Microservices addressed via REST APIs promise to increase agility by

CSA Research predicts the market for language services and technology will hit US$43.08 billion in 2017 and findings show it won’t be slowing down in 2018. This year represents an inflection point in the industry as many new technologies and approaches are starting to come online. Localization World is a tremendous opportunity to connect with

As companies come to terms with the central role that content plays in the customer journey – from building awareness through purchase and onto customer care – their digital marketing teams and localization groups are tasked with content creation, adaptation, and rollout at the global level.
During a recent CSA Research Symposium in

Finding, qualifying, and testing translators and interpreters represents a sizable investment for most language service providers (LSPs). That challenge is even greater for the fast-growing ones, any venturing into new markets, and those starting new service lines. For most LSPs, that means adding or enhancing the vendor management function to locate

CSA Research's 13th annual market study sizes the language services industry and calculates a variety of business measures. One is the growth rate for the industry overall, another is the performance of hundreds of individual suppliers that provide detailed revenue data to our survey (see figure). In this year's analysis, we estimated that the market

Blockchain is a method for concatenating blocks of transactions, which are stored securely using encryption in a distributed system that prevents bad actors from unlawfully changing records. Most media reports focus on blockchain’s use in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, where it originated. However, the language industry will be more directly

Are you making a case to add new languages, expand the number of content types, or launch a full-blown, enterprise-wide globalization strategy? CSA Research has been very busy this year analyzing and publishing hard data to enable you to position your initiatives as investment proposals to support global growth.
As you present your strategic plan

What return on investment should you expect from engaging with customers in their own language? Ever since our first report in 2002 on the benefits of localizing the user experience, CSA Research has found that demonstrating the ROI for localization is a challenging exercise. Localization managers spend an inordinate amount of their time working